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Philip Larkin, The Art of Poetry No. 30

Interviewed by Robert Phillips

Issue 84, Summer 1982

“Temperamentally and geographically remote,” the Times Literary Supplement wrote of Philip Larkin, “he has refused almost all invitations to judge, recite, review, lecture, pontificate, or to be interviewed.”

When the notion of securing a Paris Review interview with Larkin arose, the staff was not sanguine. Much to the staff’s delight, Larkin consented warily, stating that he wasn’t crazy about the idea, but that “The Paris Review series is, of course, known to me, and I can see I should be in good company.” In the case of this interview, Larkin did not let down his guard sufficiently to be interviewed in person. He stipulated that the interview be conducted entirely by mail: “You will get much better answers that way.” He took nearly five months to answer the initial set of questions sent to him at his home in Hull, England, stating, “It has taken rather a long time because, to my surprise, I found writing it suffocatingly boring.”

His letterhead, P. A. Larkin, C.B.E., C.Lit., M.A., D.Lit., D.Litt., F.R.S.L., F.L.A., is indicative of the measure of worldly recognition his relatively small output has received. Indeed, he has been called the other English poet laureate (“even more loved and needed than the official one, John Betjeman,” according to Calvin Bedient in The New York Times Book Review). But Larkin transcends his Englishness, and is widely read on the Continent and in the United States.

He has said his aim in writing a poem is “to construct a verbal device that would preserve an experience indefinitely by reproducing it in whoever read the poem.”

INTERVIEWER

Can you describe your life at Hull? Do you live in a flat or own a house?

PHILIP LARKIN

I came to Hull in 1955. After eighteen months (during which I wrote “Mr. Bleaney”), I took a University flat and lived there for nearly eighteen years. It was the top flat in a house that was reputedly the American Consulate during the war, and though it might not have suited everybody, it suited me. I wrote most of The Whitsun Weddings and all of High Windows there. Probably I should never have moved if the University hadn’t decided to sell the house, but as it was I had to get out and find somewhere else. It was a dreadful experience, as at that time houses were hard to find. In the end friends reported a small house near the University, and I bought that in 1974. I haven’t decided yet whether or not I like it.

INTERVIEWER

How many days a week do you work at the library, and for how many hours a day?

LARKIN

My job as University librarian is a full-time one, five days a week, forty-five weeks a year. When I came to Hull, I had eleven staff; now there are over a hundred of one sort and another. We built one new library in 1960 and another in 1970, so that my first fifteen years were busy. Of course, this was a period of university expansion in England, and Hull grew as much as if not more than the rest. Luckily the vice-chancellor during most of this time was keen on the library, which is why it is called after him. Looking back, I think that if the Brynmor Jones Library is a good library—and I think it is—the credit should go to him and to the library staff. And to the University as a whole, of course. But you wouldn’t be interested in all that.

INTERVIEWER

What is your daily routine?

LARKIN

My life is as simple as I can make it. Work all day, cook, eat, wash up, telephone, hack writing, drink, television in the evenings. I almost never go out. I suppose everyone tries to ignore the passing of time: some people by doing a lot, being in California one year and Japan the next; or there’s my way—making every day and every year exactly the same. Probably neither works.

INTERVIEWER

You didn’t mention a schedule for writing . . .

LARKIN

Yes, I was afraid you’d ask about writing. Anything I say about writing poems is bound to be retrospective, because in fact I’ve written very little since moving into this house, or since High Windows, or since 1974, whichever way you like to put it. But when I did write them, well, it was in the evenings, after work, after washing up (I’m sorry: you would call this “doing the dishes”). It was a routine like any other. And really it worked very well: I don’t think you can write a poem for more than two hours. After that you’re going round in circles, and it’s much better to leave it for twenty-four hours, by which time your subconscious or whatever has solved the block and you’re ready to go on.

The best writing conditions I ever had were in Belfast, when I was working at the University there. Another top-floor flat, by the way. I wrote between eight and ten in the evenings, then went to the University bar till eleven, then played cards or talked with friends till one or two. The first part of the evening had the second part to look forward to, and I could enjoy the second part with a clear conscience because I’d done my two hours. I can’t seem to organize that now.

INTERVIEWER

Does, or did, writing come easily for you? Does a poem get completed slowly or rapidly?

LARKIN

I’ve no standards of comparison. I wrote short poems quite quickly. Longer ones would take weeks or even months. I used to find that I was never sure I was going to finish a poem until I had thought of the last line. Of course, the last line was sometimes the first one you thought of! But usually the last line would come when I’d done about two-thirds of the poem, and then it was just a matter of closing the gap.

INTERVIEWER

Why do you write, and for whom?

LARKIN

You’ve been reading Auden: “To ask the hard question is simple.” The short answer is that you write because you have to. If you rationalize it, it seems as if you’ve seen this sight, felt this feeling, had this vision, and have got to find a combination of words that will preserve it by setting it off in other people. The duty is to the original experience. It doesn’t feel like self-expression, though it may look like it. As for whom you write for, well, you write for everybody. Or anybody who will listen.

INTERVIEWER

Do you share your manuscripts with anyone before publishing them? Are there any friends whose advice you would follow in revising a poem?

LARKIN

I shouldn’t normally show what I’d written to anyone: what would be the point? You remember Tennyson reading an unpublished poem to Jowett; when he had finished, Jowett said, “I shouldn’t publish that if I were you, Tennyson.” Tennyson replied, “If it comes to that, Master, the sherry you gave us at lunch was downright filthy.” That’s about all that can happen.

But when we were young, Kingsley Amis and I used to exchange unpublished poems, largely because we never thought they could be published, I suppose. He encouraged me, I encouraged him. Encouragement is very necessary to a young writer. But it’s hard to find anyone worth encouraging: there aren’t many Kingsleys about.

INTERVIEWER

In his Paris Review interview, Kingsley Amis states you helped him with the manuscript of Lucky Jim. What was the nature of that working relationship? Is part of that novel based upon your own experiences on staff at Leicester University?

LARKIN

Well, it’s all so long ago, it’s hard to remember. My general conviction was that Kingsley was quite the funniest writer I had ever met—in letters and so on—and I wanted everyone else to think so too. I know he says he got the idea of Lucky Jim from visiting me when I was working at University College Leicester. This has always seemed rather tenuous to me: after all, he was working at University College Swansea when he was writing it, and the theme—boy meets apparently nasty girl, but turns her into a nice girl by getting her away from nasty environment—is one I think has always meant a lot to Kingsley. He used it again in I Want It Now. When I read the first draft I said, Cut this, cut that, let’s have more of the other. I remember I said, Let’s have more “faces”—you know, his Edith Sitwell face, and so on. The wonderful thing was that Kingsley could “do” all those faces himself—“Sex Life in Ancient Rome” and so on. Someone once took photographs of them all. I wish I had a set.